Communicating Meaningfully with a Japanese Audience
Words are fundamental to creation. In Genesis one, God spoke — and all things came into being. In John one, Jesus is described as “the Word” — the one through whom everything was created. To communicate with his creation, “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). Words are also fundamental for us as God’s children as we praise him and express his greatness. But words can be harmful: the serpent used words to tempt Eve and Adam away from trusting God, while James three warns us about the destructive power of the tongue. Throughout the Bible we see that words and how we use them are critically important to us as God’s people. We need to take great care as we communicate.
Communicating meaningfully involves far more than simply choosing the correct words. Words don’t operate in a vacuum; they carry culturally understood nuances and implied meanings. The context and manner in which words are delivered can drastically change the receiver’s perception of a message. As a Christian worker in Japan, I’ve lately been pondering three aspects of communication: the rhetoric, the context, and the relational elements.
Passionate communication
Aristotle developed the craft of rhetoric for persuasive speaking, and his three appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos still form the basis for public speaking today. Ethos refers to the credibility and rapport of the author or speaker and how they incline the listener to accept the message. Pathos refers to the power to evoke sympathy or compassion. It often involves the emotional and imaginative elements of a message such as a personal story or illustration. Logos means “word” and refers to the logical presentation of ideas. Most communication involves all three aspects, but different audiences are more receptive to different appeals.
You don’t need to watch too much Japanese television or attend too many graduation ceremonies to observe that emotional appeals elicit strong responses from Japanese audiences (see, for example, Yang’s The Political Economy of Affect and Emotion in East Asia1). An NHK documentary producer explained, “sentimental narrations are ethical not in spite of their emotional evocations but precisely because of them.”2 He believes that the emotional aspect helps the audience feel the authenticity of the story.
In contrast, many people from English-speaking cultures respond most strongly to the logos or rational–logical element of a message. As an English speaker, I logically conclude that to reach the heart of a Japanese audience, we need to rely more on the appeals of ethos and pathos. In concluding this, I am not saying that the logical content of Christian doctrine is unimportant, but that demonstrating how passionately we feel about doctrines will help a Japanese audience gauge their importance. And while sharing credentials and personal experiences may not come naturally (I am an Aussie after all), they may enable your audience to trust you and connect with your message. Because our content is vitally important, we need to communicate it with the credentials and emotions that would accompany an important message in Japanese culture.
Furthermore, education researchers have suggested that
it “may be that for a Japanese reader what is hinted at is more important and acceptable than what is too bluntly presented”.3 Teaching important doctrine dispassionately, or too logically, may make it appear insignificant to a Japanese audience,
or alternatively, may offend them by being blunt about something important.
Contextual communication
Have you ever read a question in a new language, understood each word, but still not understood the question? Then, once you clarified the question, you couldn’t understand why it was posed? The problem might be that the question was formulated through a different thought process than what you’re accustomed to in your primary culture.
To analyse thought patterns, Richard Nesbitt and Yuri Miyamoto asked people to describe various scenes and found that Japanese participants usually began by describing the context (such as a lake), and then each object in relation to other objects and their environment. On the other hand, American participants first described the main object (such as a fish) and then other objects independently. Later, Japanese participants retained more information about the environment and the relationship between various objects, whereas American participants retained information about the main objects in the picture. Nesbitt and Miyamoto concluded, “There is growing evidence to demonstrate that perceptual processes are influenced by culture. People in Western cultures have been found to organize objects by emphasizing rules and categories and to focus on salient objects independently from the context, whereas people in East Asian cultures are more inclined to attend to the context and to the relationship between the objects and the context”.4
Other researchers claim that different thought patterns result from the different structures of languages.5 For example, while an English speaker might say, “The cat sat on the hat”, a Japanese speaker is more likely to phrase it: “The hat was by the cat sat on.” For this reason, Japanese speakers are more likely to pay attention to the contextual and relational aspects of what they perceive. Graham Orr also observed, “conversations, even public speeches, do not tend to be formed along the lines of logic . . . Rather, meaning is associated with events and happenings, with people and relationships.”6
Suffice to say, whether for cultural or linguistic reasons, we think differently! We know from experience that direct translation doesn’t produce the same meaning, so it’s useful to think about the thought patterns that result from Japanese culture and language and how we can structure our communication to more naturally “gel” with how our audience thinks. Again, I’m not suggesting we should forget important content, but rather that we should consider how we present it. This might mean, for example, teaching the doctrine of perspicuity of Scripture through the historical story of Luther or through the biblical context of Paul and Timothy in 2 Timothy rather than as an abstract concept in a series on systematic theology.
Loving communication
“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1). It doesn’t matter how well crafted your choice of words and flow of ideas, if your audience doesn’t know you love them, you are not communicating the love of Christ. Expressions of love are culturally diverse, and a one-size-fits-all approach will not communicate love. As Tim Adeney and Stuart Heath explain, “If I want to love you by making you a coffee, I need to know what kind of coffee you like. With the best will in the world, I might make you an espresso, but if you only drink soy lattes, then my attempt to love you has failed.”7 They list regenerate hearts and Spirit-transformed minds as the basis for Christian love, and suggest developing practical structures (such as regular coffee times or home groups) and contexts (such as rosters for helping people in need of practical assistance) to enable the expression of practical love in each situation we encounter.
A helpful tool for discerning how to love is Gary Chapman’s The 5 Love Languages.8 Chapman describes five different ways that people primarily feel loved: words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time, and physical touch. Although he originally wrote it as a marriage counselor, these categories have been expanded to apply to the communication of love in a wide variety of contexts. Thinking about how these types of love play out in Japanese culture can help us work out how to love the people in our audience.
For example, words of affirmation might be seen in compliments women give each other for their clothes and accessories, or cries of “sugoi!” (great!) on the sporting field or among a group of boys playing computer games. Japanese people take introductions and recommendations seriously and will often accompany you to meet a new dentist or mechanic, join a preschool, or get lunch at a sushi restaurant. This could be one way to express love through acts of service.
Gift-giving is also an important aspect of Japanese culture. If this is the primary love language of someone you want to communicate with, then it will be vitally important to follow the cultural conventions of gift-giving with that person in order for them to feel you love them.
When we initially joined our Japanese church, I was frustrated by the long hours of “just sitting around” that happened after lunch. I had failed to recognize a Japanese expression of spending quality time together. Physical touch is evident among groups of teenage girls, who might hold hands while they shop, or hug as they say goodbye. It’s also seen on weekends as young Dads carry their toddlers around parks on their shoulders.
There are many other ways to think about expressing love. For example, Smalley and Trent suggest using word pictures to speak meaningfully with people we love9 and their strategies can be adapted to a Japanese audience.
Whatever strategy we use, one point is clear: we need to learn to ‘speak’ the language in which our audience members feel loved.
We have a great commission; we have the greatest message ever to be told, so let’s use our words wisely with passion, attention to context, and love to touch hearts so that more Japanese people might raise their voices in celebration of God and his wondrous love for us.
1 Yang, Jie, The Political Economy of Affect and Emotion in East Asia, Routledge, 2014.
2 White, Daniel, ‘Tears, capital, ethics: Television and the public sphere in Japan’, p. 109, in Yang, Jie The Political Economy of Affect and Emotion in East Asia, Routledge, 2014, pp. 99–115.
3 Mok, Waiching Enid, ‘Contrastive Rhetoric and the Japanese Writer of EFL’ JALT Journal Vol 15, No. 2 November 1993. Available online: http://jalt-publications.org/jj/articles/2849-contrastive-rhetoric-and-japanese-writer-efl
4 Nisbett, Richard E. and Yuri Miyamoto, ‘The influence of culture: holistic versus analytic perception’, in TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences Vol. 9 No. 10 October 2005, pp. 467–473. p. 472. Available online at: http://smash.psych.nyu.edu/courses/spring10/lhc/materials/nisbett.pdf
5 Tajima, Yayoi and Nigel Duffield ‘Japanese Versus Chinese Differences in Picture Description and Recall: Implications for the Geography of Thought’ available online at: http://anfortas1.blogspot.jp/2010/12/do-asians-really-think-differently-from.html accessed 22 May 2015.
6 Orr, Graham, Not so Secret: Being Contemporary Agents for Mission, IVP, 2012, p. 140.
7 Adeney, Tim and Stuart Heath, Love & Wisdom, Gospel Groundwork, 2013, p.101.
8 Chapman, Gary The 5 Love Languages: the Secret to Love that Lasts, Northfield, 2010. http://www.5lovelanguages.com/
9 Smalley, Gary and John Trent, The Language of Love, Pocket Books, 1991.
Photo by Karen Ellrick